There seems to be a media blackout against Dinesh D’Souza’s 2020 election documentary “2000 Mules.” Why? Well, quite simply, in the film D’Souza claims to show video proof that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump back in November of 2020.
It’s not even just the usuals like CNN and MSNBC who are censoring this documentary, but even Fox News. The conservative news channel hasn’t mentioned “2000 Mules” a single time on the air. D’Souza is tackling a topic that, in 2022, can get someone banned by quite literally everyone.
Audiences can’t stream “2000 Mules” via standard VOD platforms like Google Play, iTunes or Amazon Prime, so D’Souza has been selling the film on Locals.com and Rumble. Despite the limitations, the film has already made $10 million, easily making it the most successful doc of the last 3 years. It played select theaters for only two nights earlier this month, making a few million dollars in just over 300 theatres, before going on VOD a week later.
Due to high audience demand, the film is going back to 400 theatres this coming Friday. So, what’s the big deal here? Why is there such ferocious pushback against this documentary? And why are red-voting Americans responding to it with such fervent passion?
D’Souza’s documentary claims to show footage of election fraud obtained via video surveillance footage from select ballot box locations. The titular “mules” are these mysterious men and women dropping off ballots at the box while wearing gloves in the dead of the night. Geotracking data, gleaned from cell phones, shows the movement of these “mules” as they go from one ballot box to the next, depositing hundreds of ballots.
I haven’t seen “2000 Mules,” and only heard about it via media outlets attempting to debunk and/or fact-check it. And yet, there are still millions of people in the U.S. who have seen it, these are probably people who already believed the 2020 election was stolen before even watching D’Souza’s film. Their rose-coloured glasses will believe what they see on-screen, while Biden-voting democrats will just roll their eyes and not pay much attention it.
D’Souza has taken advantage of the Trump demographic with “2000 Mules.” It’s an incendiary subject matter, one which alleges severe accusations. A stolen election means the end of a democracy and that is what his film seems to be insinuating.
What’s most fascinating to me about the film’s success is that it’s changed the way you can sell and advertise a movie in the 21st century — with it being singlehandedly censored by every major media platform in the country, D’Souza has circumvented the marketing formula and brought about a new way to promote a movie.
The result is that it has managed to gross a boatload of money without any advertisement, media coverage, festival presence or critical reception. By the end of the this coming weekend it might become the second most successful indie of 2022, after A24’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”
This is the adaptation of the nonfiction book by Dan Schilling and Lori Longfritz. It wrapped production in February and has been in post-production ever since. The film test-screened a few months ago.